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What are the factors that trigger a last-minute shopping cart abandonment? What can ecommerce teams do to make a difference?

As buyers, we behave very differently online compared with a trip to the local mall: in the offline world, we can handle goods before purchase to check their suitability. The store will be there tomorrow so we can always bring back any purchases that are unsuitable.

We can shop safely, secure in the knowledge that there’s little risk of making an incorrect purchase. And as a result, our behavior is influenced so that our emotions begin to outweigh logical and rational concerns of risk.

The enjoyment comes not only from the emotional high of the purchase itself, but also from the process of choosing, comparing, and getting a good deal. And with every emotional high, there’s the potential post purchase low – the disappointment that can creep in as our logical ‘left brain’ finally reasserts itself and begins to re-evaluate our purchases. But with the store only a short drive away, it’s easy to take items back.

Our behavior online is very different, and especially in tough economic times, logic and reasoning tend to reign.

This was reinforced this week by a new survey looking in part at what influences online purchase decisions. You can get the full mini-report here (registration required). The research shows that buyers are spending more time researching online, and spending less. You could summarize this behavior as searching for a better deal.

This research also shows that the online buyer is still concerned about the risk of making an incorrect purchase: while free shipping is the single strongest influencer, next are product ratings/reviews; free returns policy; multiple product views; and a Trustmark symbol.

All of these factors are looking at risk: the risk of making the wrong decision, and our ability to return the goods if we get it wrong. This is no doubt why, where we shop online, the reputation of the ‘Brand’ and returns policy are so important online.

We will tend to buy faster from brands we trust, and faster purchases are much less likely to be abandoned. Of course we can compare prices easily online, and having found the item we want, we can easily find it cheaper somewhere else. But many people do not always buy the same item from the cheapest source: we balance the vendor risk with the price.So before emotional buying can really thrive online, we need trust.

But in many ways this survey is disappointing: there is no mention of the sample size or how it was conducted, so we have to treat the results with caution. As a piece of work it’s also incomplete, because it fails to look at the emotional reasons for buying, and these can be crucial in getting that conversion on your website. Emotional buyers are less price-sensitive and much more likely to complete the purchase with you.

Here are some emotional reasons that were not covered, by way of example:

• Number of items remaining in stock.
• Trusted vendor -Can’t find it elsewhere
• Cheaper than elsewhere
• Recommendations, media & buzz

Take the first one for example: If you are researching a flight, and you see the magic words ‘Only one ticket left at this price’ it has a galvanizing impact on behavior. By including this information, the travel website has changed your perception of risk. Now there’s emotion at play; it’s a competition between you and everyone else on the site to get the deal.

Your concerns about doing business with the site have been displaced very effectively with a different perceived risk (that you don’t get the deal), which has reengineered your behavior and is more likely to lead to a purchase.

So what can ecommerce teams learn from this?

1. Emotional buyers are much more likely to convert.
Reinforcing emotional cues can help significantly to create an urgency for a purchase deep down that defies rational logic. This doesn’t apply to all product categories, and websites – you need to be trusted first and foremost. Emotional buyer behavior is often poorly understood by web teams. The skills required to build and maintain websites attract ‘right brained’ logical individuals – often not emotional buyers themselves!

2. In-session intervention tools can have limited value
The research also shows that only 5% of buyers consider Live Chat to have influenced them a purchase decision. There are many reasons for this, but the appallingly low take up rates on live chat are indicative of a wider problem in the way that it is typically implemented. Live chat can be a great help, in particular with technical products (such as electronics) but often it is implemented as a sales tool, not as a customer service tool.

3. Free shipping
The cost of shipping has for long been one of the leading causes of shopping cart abandonment as buyers realize that the cost of the shipping has made the item too expensive. Amazon.com has taken a lead in providing free shipping and buyers love it – as borne out by this data. But most ecommerce sites, however much they want to increase their website conversion rate, can’t afford free shipping. So given this, following up on shopping cart abandoners, with targeted free shipping offers can be a VERY effective technique. When done well,* abandonment remarketing emails can recover up to 50% of those that abandoned.

4. Check your returns policy
Fashion sales online are growing very fast, but with return rates often exceeding 30%. It’s now accepted that this is a cost of doing business online. Given the cost of shipping is such a big influencing factor, the cost of return shipping is too. The conclusion has to be to make it really easy for your customers to return goods without cost to them. The costs of doing so will be outweighed by increases in sales.

*Abandonment remarketing can be a great benefit to the buyer, or it can be intrusive. Much depends on how it is implemented: Tone (service not sales) and Timing (immediate follow up) are the two key factors to remember, but if you’d like to find out more then visit www.seewhy.com or check out this blog How To Make Customers Love Great Service In Action. If you’d like to know how to do it badly, then check out this tongue-in-cheek blog instead: How to mess up: 5 Worst Practices to ensure your triggered email communications remain irrelevant here